A Look at Kyma's Full Wine Menu: by-the-Glass Selections, Bottles, and Pricing
By Robert Thorne
Building a world-class Greek wine program requires breaking common American misconceptions about Mediterranean viticulture. For decades, commercial domestic diners associated Greece almost exclusively with cheap retsina or rustic table carafes. Kyma systematically dismantled that notion. The restaurant organized its cellar around geological microclimates: the volcanic ashes of the Cyclades, the high-altitude limestone plateaus of the Peloponnese, and the alpine amphitheaters of Macedonia.
In Buckhead, the cellar holds hundreds of selections, offering vertical depth in benchmark producers like Domaine Sigalas, Alpha Estate, and Boutari. The Manhattan outpost emphasizes quick-turn vintage freshness, certified organic estates, and biodynamic producers from Crete and Cephalonia. Despite geographic operating differences, both programs share a sommelier mandate: prioritize low-intervention, high-acidity bottlings capable of cutting through the richness of charcoal-grilled branzino and rich cold meze spreads.
Sommeliers on floor duty bypass standard Chardonnay or Pinot Grigio requests by redirecting diners toward indigenous counterparts with better structural balance. The resulting program operates less like a standard steakhouse beverage catalog and more like an educational archive of ancient viticulture updated with stainless-steel vinification.
Robert Thorne covers electric vehicle innovations, autonomous driving systems, global mobility trends, and automotive engineering developments.
